Keeping tabs on traffic

When you start working on websites, traffic becomes a key feature of you day-to-day.

Initially, this is an obsession with page views… how many ‘hits’ a piece of content gets.

You then dig a little deeper (How many people are watching video content, and for how long?, for example) before becoming fully immersed in the full range of metrics on offer and then losing sight of what they are actually telling you about your website’s performance.

I must confess that I’m interested in the referring traffic… that is, finding out which sites on the ‘Web are directing traffic users to our content.

This has thrown up some interesting results… a Mercedes owners club blog linking to a story on proportional parking charges for cars with higher emissions, for example.

A pleasant surprise this week though has been my colleague Heather Jameson’s profile article on Bala Mahendran, chief executive of Basildon Borough Council.

Mr Mahendran is from Sri Lanka and news site infolanka.com picked up on the story and pushed nearly 1,500 visitors our way on Wednesday afternoon this week.

Nice to see UK local government having international appeal.